Introduction

I mentioned in my recent Heatkiller GPU block review that it was going to be the first of a series focusing on the flagship RTX 4090—the aftermarket ASUS RTX 4090 Strix at that! NVIDIA has decided to elongate the 4000 series lifetime and so, despite these GPUs having been out for a while, there is still merit to taking a look at what's on the market today. This also helps me know where the various water block manufacturers are these days with their designs, especially since most companies tend to go with simple changes for GPU compatibility each generation and only really come up with a new cooling engine every five years or so, if not longer. Today is Alphacool's turn and thanks to them for providing a review sample to TechPowerUp.


Alphacool has recently overhauled its water block design language both inside and out. I was impressed with what the Core 1 CPU block brought for the asking price and the timing worked out such that the German brand had just released its new Core GPU block line to replace the older Eisblock GPX platform. A single look at the photo above shows that Alphacool has decided to skip out on the relatively complicated coolant flow pathway involving multiple smaller cold plates and lots of channels/O-rings, which perhaps came off busy for some. The new Core GPU block follows a similar idea as the Core CPU block in offering value for money without necessarily compromising on performance. Let's put these bold claims to the test today in this review which begins with a look at the product specifications in the table below.

Specifications